I covered my first professional football game before I could legally drink a beer. In the ensuing two decades (plus) I’ve paid cash money to attend no more than a dozen sporting events.

I’ve got three kids in private school, a son who just started driving, another who is about to and a daughter who believes there must have been a mistake because she was certainly meant to be born into royalty.

If I didn’t make my living by actually witnessing in person these great NFL spectacles, I would certainly choose to watch football on the flat screen. I’d enjoy the private restroom, the couch for halftime naps just like my dad used to take and a 10-year-old would-be princess earning her keep by going back and forth from the fridge whenever I wanted food or beverage.

I could invite my two sons and my wife to join me (remember, the daughter is working as a waitress).

Even if we stocked up on tri tip and shrimp, we’d save upwards of $400, not need binoculars, get instant replay, not have to inch in and out of a parking lot and have virtually no risk of there being an unruly person sitting next to us (the wife can be obnoxious, but she rarely gets abusive).

So there it is, full disclosure.

I feel you. I certainly don’t fault you.

You should not be judged for failing to dip into the college fund to buy season tickets or skipping lunch for a month in order to attend a single Chargers game.

Still, good citizens of San Diego, whose right it is to not pay an exorbitant price to watch your team play, you must also not be shocked when your team leaves town in 2014.

The NFL blackout rule stinks, but it’s good business.

It is ignorant to think otherwise.

Between Thursday’s announcement of the blackout and Sunday’s kickoff between the Chargers and Atlanta Falcons, somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 tickets will be sold to Southern Californians who know the only way they can watch the game is in a seat at Qualcomm Stadium.

That’s as much as $400,000 in the Chargers’ coffers that wouldn’t be if the game were being televised.

Because another thing we need to understand is this is a business.

The Chargers play their home games in no better than the NFL’s third-worst stadium. Qualcomm is a dump. You should not pay to go there, you should send your trash there.

Playing in this broken down, smelly stadium provides relatively limited opportunity for revenue. And by relatively, I mean in relation to those teams who have their own stadiums, with more and better luxury suites and seats to sell, more signage revenue, a better all-around experience to entice fans to actually come.

Ticket sales are the No.1 local revenue source for every NFL team. For the Chargers, considering the disadvantages catalogued above, that source is even more crucial.

That’s the primary reason the Chargers opted to not take advantage of the NFL’s allowance that teams could lower the requirement to avoid a blackout to 85 percent of their general seats being sold. To the Chargers, that 15 percent amounts to a potential $1 million per game in lost revenue.

Sunday will be the second blackout in the NFL this season, through 48 games league-wide.

Now, for all the other factors, it is winning (or lack thereof) that dictates ticket sales in this town.

The Chargers went 43 straight games without a blackout from November 2004 through the 2009 season because they won five AFC West titles in that span.

They’ve had five of their past 17 home games blacked out because they haven’t made the playoffs in that time.

Take heart, the Chargers and their fans may have gotten a favor from the NFL schedulers.

The team’s next home game is a Monday night against Denver and its new old quarterback in three weeks. It will be November by the time the Chargers play a fourth home game, also in prime time. That’s five games from now.

It’s up to the product on the field. If the Chargers are winning by then, enough people will buy tickets so you can stay home on the couch.